“THE READ ALOUD-HANDBOOK” by Jim Trelease

My young friend Iulia, who is specialized in parenting, recommended “The read-aloud Handbook” to me. At that time, I didn’t know about Jim Trelease’s book, but I was behaving accurately as the author advised the parents: I was reading aloud to my two sons.

I started reading to them when they were very young because I sincerely enjoyed doing this. Naturally, at first, the books I was reading to them had big pictures and only one sentence on each page. Nonetheless, I considered the books to be beautiful even to me as an adult.

“Whenever an adult reads to a child, three important things are happening simultaneously and painlessly:
1. A pleasure connection is being made between child and book.
2. Both parent and child are learning something from the book they’re sharing (double learning).
3. The adult is pouring sounds and syllables called words into the child’s ear.”

Once my children grew up, I started sharing the stories that I read in my books with them. For me, it was a natural stage. Before I had my boys, my husband was the only one who listens to me talking excitedly about the books that I read; it was then I decided it was time to huddle more recipients. 😉

“Lead by EXAMPLE. Make sure your children see you reading for pleasure other than read-aloud time.
Share with them your enthusiasm for whatever you are reading.”

As Jim Trelease is mentioned in his book, the read-aloud time should continue even after the children had already learned to read by themselves. But let me tell you that it is not that easy.
When my boys were 9 and 12 years old, I realized that they weren’t going to read my favorite book: “To kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. Therefore, I decided to read two pages to them every night. In the first two nights, they were always grumbling “not again!!!”. Keep in mind, they were already pre-adolescents, but after a while, they started enjoying it, and soon, at the end of the two pages they would be asking me: “read us more”.
They concluded that they liked the book and they became so interested that they got to see the movie as well.

“Literature is considered such an important medium-more than television, more than films, more than art- because literature brings us closest to the human heart. And of the two forms of literature (fiction and nonfiction), the one that brings us closest and presents the meaning of life most clearly to the child is Fiction.“

I should clarify that for me, reading aloud to my children, was easy because I was already into storybooks. If I had to read about, I don’t know, robotics to my children, I definitely would have failed, BIG TIME!!!
So, if you have begun to trust me, please don’t hesitate to send me your children so that I can read to them aloud!

Kindle, 2011